When I bought my 1988 E250, it rattled terribly. Every door was loose. Over the last few months, i've been gradually replacing the seals and shims in the doors, and most of the doors are now snug and fit perfectly. I have the barn-door style van, not the sliding door van.

Now with almost all the doors fixed, there is one door that just won't stop rattling. It's the passenger side door, which I'd assume would be the same door and seals and stoppers as any other Ford van or truck from 1988.

The door rattles at the slightest bump.

I checked out the door, and the seal looks good. The stoppers look good too. There are no shims on this door, whereas my other doors have shims.

I've noticed that the closed door doesn't sit flush with the rest of the van. It sits out almost 3/16". It doesn't "shut" any closer to flush. I'm assuming that the door latch isn't closing tight enough, but I don't know how to modify that. How can I adjust the current door latching mechanism to make the door shut tight, or do I need to replace something to make this work?

 

Loosen the door striker, then you can reposition it and tighten.

 

X 2 on this. You need a large torex bit to loosen the striker bolt, then move the striker bolt in and tighten it down. It may take more than 1 adjustment to get it right.

 

I gotta check that on mine to. Mine rattle all the time when the van is moving to.

 

It's also possible for a door to be bent/twisted too. Sometimes they need some tweaking in various ways to get them fitting better. Unless it's something you've done though, best talk to someone with some bodyshop experience for that.

 

Thanks guys. I'll fish out my torx set somewhere in the garage.

 

They can be pretty tight. I've used a pipe wrench along with the torx socket so they don't strip.
I just remembered, there is a plastic bushing on the striker you may be missing. You can get them in the HELP section. I tried to replace the bushing on my truck, but after removing the striker I couldnt because the washer wouldn't come off. You can get a new striker with the bushing also.

 

Following up on this fix, I was able to adjust and fix the door rattle by replacing the striker assy.

I replaced the whole assembly, because the metal on the bolt was pretty worn and the bushing was nowhere to be found. Also, it looked like it was bent a little. The assembly was about $10, but I'm sure the bushing alone would have been a lot cheaper.

It looked like this: